Wally Haas: Expanded gambling is a sucker’s bet

If your credit card bills are more than you earn every month, what should you do? Find another job or play the lottery?

Wally Haas

If your credit card bills are more than you earn every month, what should you do? Find another job or play the lottery?

The lottery’s too much of a long-shot. Driving to Elgin to play the slots at Grand Victoria Casino is sure to pay off, right?

Say you beat the odds and win a few bucks. Do you use the money as you intended — pay down the credit card — or do you use it to buy something new and allow your debt to grow?

Reasonable people know that you can’t gamble your way out of debt. They also know that you should control your existing debt before you start buying new things.

The Illinois Senate unanimously passed a six-year, $25.4 billion capital plan last week. That’s good. But most senators think they can pay for the much-needed construction program by adding three casinos to the nine riverboats in operation. That’s bad.

The state has at least a $2 billion deficit in the general fund. It pays its bills late. The pension system is underfunded. Lots of money problems and no solutions.

All we hear is that the state needs more revenue, despite the fact that natural growth will add about $800 million to the state treasury. We haven’t heard much about reducing the size of government, about making cuts to properly finance important programs. Instead we hear about new programs that need new money. Heck, lawmakers even voted to increase their own salaries.

In your household, if you can’t pay the bills you stop spending as much. You buy tuna or hotdogs to save a few bucks, you drive less and you make fewer impulse purchases. You can’t add to your paycheck just because you want to and you can’t count on cashing in at a casino.

The only way for the state to make money is for you to lose money. The house always wins and the state wants a cut from those winnings. The state only gets what’s leftover after the casinos get enough to make their owners happy.

You won’t see James Bond in a tux with a buxom blonde playing blackjack at these casinos. What you see is regular people, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, some of whom allow gambling to become an addiction that makes them neglect their children and lose their life savings. You’ll see poor people willing to bet all they have left for the slim chance that they can win enough money to get their lives back on track.

Or you might find an elected official who used a city credit card — taxpayer dollars — to feed a habit.

Those cases may be a minority, but why add to the temptation to abuse, neglect and steal?

Where does it stop? Remember when the riverboats had to cruise? Now they don’t have to leave the docks. Remember when there were limits on how much you could lose? Now you can lose your shirt. Today there are limits to the number of slots, etc., in these floating casinos. If the Senate bill passes the House, those limits will grow. Eventually, there will be no limits.

Speaker of the House Mike Madigan is trying to slow the process that would have Illinois trail only Las Vegas in the number of places you could place a bet. He wants to have public hearings around the state so people know what’s at stake.

Public input is important, but why isn’t the issue put on a ballot, something voters said they wanted back in 1994? Residents in 14 Illinois communities passed an advisory referendum that asked whether gambling proposals should be approved by voters. In Winnebago County, 76 percent said they wanted a voice in gambling decisions.

Yet despite gambling being on the table almost every year, there has been no talk of asking voters whether they want more places to lose money. That’s probably because in states and communities that have let the voters decide, voters usually say no thanks.

Our politicians think they know what’s best for us.

Gambling proponents push it as economic salvation for states and communities. I’d be more inclined to support expanded gambling if folks came up to me and said, “I want more entertainment options and I think casinos are great entertainment.”

Instead I hear, “we need the money,” especially from folks who say they never intend to set foot in a casino.

Gambling is disposable income. Money spent at slot machines, poker, blackjack, etc., is money that’s not being spent on movies, restaurants and other entertainment that helps communities thrive.

Do you think the state is better off today then when it first legalized riverboats in the early ‘90s? I see at least 2 billion reasons it isn’t.

Wally Haas is editorial page editor of the Rockford Register Star. His e-mail address is whaas@rrstar.com.

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